From the junction with Eastney Street the riverside path which was Crane Street continues eastwards as High Bridge. This article will look at the path once h the draw dock is passed. Until recently, like Crane Street, Highbridge contained a mixture of pubs and small scale industrial buildings – most of them offices and workshops for river based activities. It ends with the almshouses known as Trinity Hospital said to be the oldest buildings in Greenwich. It is probable that when the Court was held at Greenwich palace this area was one where career courtiers, diplomats and administrators had their expensive, riverside houses.
It has been speculated that ‘High Bridge’ as a name refers to a landing place or a ‘bridge’. The word ‘Bridge’ was once used to describe a structure which we would call a ‘pier’ or a ‘jetty’. There is apparently a reference to a ‘Court Bridge’ being destroyed in the middle ages, probably on Crowley’s Wharf. ‘High Bridge’ is thus the road which went to this structure.
It is also sometimes far from clear what the actual road name is, or was. Some buildings are given with an address sometimes in Crane Street and at other times in High Bridge. We are however passing the draw dock at the bottom of Eastney Street and continuing eastwards between modern housing and old wharf offices.
The first buildings past the draw dock today are wharf side offices, but until the 1940s this was the site of the Three Crowns Pub, originally called High Bridge Place. This was a weather boarded building with big bay windows on two floors overlooking the river. It dated from at least 1800 and was demolished in 1932. It was at one time used as the Harbour Masters Office – I wrote an article about this, published in Weekender in May 2018. It may have been used by the Harbour Master from as early as the 1790s and closed when the Harbour Masters House on Ballast Quay was built in the 1850s. I suppose it was acceptable to have a joint operation between a river regulatory body and a pub – the Georgians, after all, had a fairly relaxed attitude towards drink.
The buildings now on site, numbered 1-3, date from the 1930s or 1940s and have housed a series of river related offices. In the 1950s occupants were tug owners, Alpha Towage, and their name still appears on the river facing frontage to the building, although it is now used by light industry. Alpha Towage appears to have gone into administration in 1973, but a company of that name is still active at Brake in Germany.
On the other side of the road are new houses and a gym for the rowing club. They were built on an area called Creedy’s Yard - I would be interested to know who Creedy was if anyone has any information. Before the houses were built the archaeologists were on site and came up with a hitherto unguessed at riverside industry in an area thought to have been used in the late 16th and early 17thcenturies. “Excavation .. identified evidence for pin making in this area ... both sharpened and unsharpened pins and pinner’s bones. ....... the pin blanks are likely to have been made locally”. The explain that “Pinner’s bones are animal bones... modified to hold copper alloy pins ..... while the points were filed during manufacture “.
Further on along the riverside at 11-15 are more buildings from the 1940s ad 1950s They were used by Griffith's who were a lighterage firm and Donovan’s who were barge repairers., who may still own them. They are now let to small businesses and charities. I can recall meetings of an environmental charity in one of these unprepossessing buildings and being amazed and the standard of comfort (lots of chocolate biscuits too) and the amazing river views from picture windows. It is understood that a planning application is currently extant to build flats here
11-15 are the last buildings before the path eventually widens out to an area of planting outside Trinity College. They appear to be on the site of the Crown and Sceptre pub, which was another weather boarded building with bow windows overlooking the river. Rather larger than the other pubs it had a second story level bridge which crossed Highbridge and ran towards another pub called the Crown and Sceptre Tap. It might be of interest that of these riverside pubs the Crown and Sceptre along with the Trafalgar and the Ship are listed in Pigot's 1836 Directory under ‘Inns and Hotels’ while the Yacht and the Three Crowns –plus The Union (now the Cutty Sark) are listed as ‘Public houses’. Crown and Sceptre appears to have been particularly upmarket in that its managers were Quartermaine and Lovegrove who provided catering services to several establishments in central London = and who could advertise their whitebait as being of superior quality and the pub is described as ‘gastronomically celebrated’.
The Crown and Sceptre eventually became the Conservative Club. The club had held its inaugural meeting there in 1882 and eventually took it over. On maps from the early 20th century the riverside buildings here are shown as ‘Conservative Club’ rather than ‘Crown and Sceptre’. The building was eventually demolished in the 1930s.
We emerge from the narrow part of high bridge to an area in
front of Trinity Hospital. The Hospital is said to be the oldest building in
Greenwich, but as an almshouse it has no place in this article which is
supposed to be about riverside industry (counting pubs as part of the
entertainment industry!). The river wall
in front of the pub is relevant and interesting, clearly rebuilt and with
plaques which say ‘This wall was
erected - and the piles fixed - Anno Domini 1817 - William Smith, Warden. Variable high tides - March 30th 1874 - Joseph
Giles, Warden. Extraordinary high tide - January 7th 1928 - when 75ft of this
wall were demolished - Leonard Collyer, Warden.
I am unable to find out what the circumstances were around
the building of the wall here, or indeed about the the plaque – would be
interested in any information. The 1928 flood is well recorded and followed
both a storm surge upriver and melt water from snow coming down. Flooding
was, and is, a perennial problem and although the age of the river wall and its
origins are unclear there are records of repairs following floods in this area
from the 1330s. It may be relevant that a planning application to rebuild this
stretch of wall was submitted in 2018.
On maps and drawings of the early 20th century a
ramp is shown going down from the Crown and Sceptre to the river and a mooring in front of the wall
and I wonder if this is the equally elusive ‘Sand wharf’. Please let me know.
A report on the
archaeological dig in High Bridge with much more detail is in Nicholas Cooke
and Christopher Philpott’s Excavations
a Creeds Yard London and Middlesex Archaeological Society Transactions Vol.53
Web page on the 1928 flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_Thames_flood
Pictures of Trinity Almshouse Stairs https://www.flickr.com/photos/thamesdiscovery/sets/72157711640467778/
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